Protect Your Intellectual Property

Protecting the rights of those who create intellectual property should be a high priority for all UNH faculty and staff. Find out your role in maintaining the rights to your work and preventing your misuse of others' work.

Invention Process

The Invention Process starts with an idea. Find the forms and information needed to protect your idea.

Technology Transfer

Technology transfer is the exchange or sharing of knowledge, skills, processes, or technologies across different organizations. This process enables scientific and technological developments to be accessible to a wider range of users who can then develop the technology further and use it to create new products, processes, applications, materials or services.

Material Transfer Agreements (MTAs)

Material Transfer Agreements (MTAs) address the exchange of research materials between individuals at separate organizations. Case-by-case negotiation of MTAs often is necessary, particularly when intellectual property or ownership issues are involved.

Copyright Protection

Copyright, a form of intellectual property law, protects original works of authorship including literary, dramatic, musical, and artistic works, such as poetry, novels, movies, songs, computer software, and architecture.

Find resources here to help you protect your own work and use others' work responsibly.

Patent Protection

A patent is a set of exclusive rights granted for a limited period of time in exchange for a disclosure of an invention. A patent is a right to exclude others from making, selling, or using the patented invention for a limited term and is essentially a legally recognized monopoly that the government grants in exchange for a disclosure of how to make and use an invention. Patentable inventions must be new, useful, and non-obvious.

Trademark Protection

Trademarks are a form of intellectual property. Like patents, copyrights, and know-how, trademarks can be licensed, sold, donated, litigated, and abandoned. A trademark or service mark includes any word, name, symbol, device, or any combination, used or intended to be used to identify and distinguish the goods/services of one seller or provider from those of others, and to indicate the source of the goods/services. It is more common to use the terminology and symbol, Trademark (™), rather than the term service mark or sm. A trademark does not prevent others from producing similar goods or services.

Trade Secret Protection

A trade secret is any non-public information that is treated as a secret and that provides a person or entity with a competitive advantage. Universities generally do not hold or possess trade secrets given the mission of promoting the free and public dissemination of knowledge. Trade secrets may also conflict with federal funding agencies mandates to broadly disseminate the results, data, and information that arise from the work performed utilizing federal funds.